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Topic: CB550 Bobber (Read 4644 times)

Since I can't work on the bike at the moment and I've got WAY too much time on my hands I thought I'd add in some details about what I've done so far. I didn't take a lot of pictures and my phone took a dump last week so I don't have any more, you'll just have to rely on your reading skills.

The original builder installed a small vertical plate on the bottom of the frame rails in the seat area which faces forward. It has several holes already which were used for switch mounting. I decided to hold onto that design element. I went with three switches. One is an small airplane landing gear switch, it has a decent current rating so we used it as the master. It's got a threaded end on the toggle so I need to find something cool to drill a hole in and thread for the end. There is also a momentary toggle for the starter and an on off for the lights. My previous 550 was wired with an off for the lights so that they didn't rob the ignition system of juice, I like this idea so I stuck with it. Since I don't plan on doing a lot of late night riding and the small headlights aren't very bright anyway I just wired the bright side of the headlight. Head and tail go through the switch, turning it off kills the lights.

The three fuses are mounted on a plate I cut to go right under the seat. The R/R and ignition unit are mounted to the bottom of this plate. The space was a bit tight so I had to get a little creative with mounting the ignition unit. It has threaded mount holes in it and two of the four were in a good spot so we used some aluminum standoffs. The other two were not in such a good place so I had to make an aluminum bracket with one nut plate in it to get one hole in the right spot.

Funny note: I cut the little bracket out of stainless but had to do a good bit of shaping to so it would fit in between some frame pieces. I trimmed it and was over smoothing it out on the spindle shaper. All of a sudden it caught, snatched it out of my finger, dragged it through the guard and fired it across the shop. I thought it took my finger off and Matt was one step from catching it in the head. We had a chuckle over that one. Ten minutes later I burned the shit out of my finger with it. I definitely bled for that little thing.

The lower tank would be a cool to use as the virago 1100 does. Sub tank for reserve, has a thermistor in the main tank to indicate when it is empty. They just use a low pressure 12v pump to fill the carb.

Thanks for the kind words fellas. I really dig this seat too. Especially since it was a gift from an old army buddy. I just spend all my motorcycle money on getting my daily ride back on the road so it may be a while before any more significant progress occurs.